Spectre of War

by Kin S. Law

  “My word, what a lashing,” Hargreaves sighed. It represented an odious amount of monetary damages, and bore all the marks of a golem crime. The French insurance companies had been quick to pay, but not without a smirk tangible in their telegraphed paperwork. France did not as yet possess automata craftsmen, although their engines were excellent for the purpose. The spite was thicker than Vacherin Mont D’or.

  Unfortunately the case would have to wait—it was too late to call on Temple Mills, where the victimized engine had been sent. Suddenly aware of the dwindling embers, the inspector yearned for a comfortable fire. Perhaps a good book to take her mind off the case. Thankfully, there was something almost as good nearby, so she grabbed her riding coat and goggles to go to it.

  Stepping into the smoothly tiled, utilitarian corridors of the Yard, she took the back stair and descended into the bowels of the building. The smoothly plastered walls became raw iron pilings and mortared brick. Damp dripped from every crack in the wall. This close to the Thames, it could not be helped. The training rooms were down here. With guilt, she remembered she hadn’t been keeping up with her judo instructor’s sparring sessions.

  Past the padded practice rooms and locker areas, she finally reached her destination. Hargreaves breathed deeply. The scent of lift compound took her back to the refreshing showers aboard the Huckleberry. Camouflaged behind an old archive door, Scotland Yard had secretly hollowed out two levels of concrete and pipe. Some cheeky monkey had scribbled “You Must Be” on the office’s temporary window plaque, over the mysterious anagram:

  M.A.D.

  The inspector turned the tumblers to the clockworked lock, and opened the door to the cellar rooms.

  “Oy, don’t you be standin’ there, lass!”

  Hargreaves had to duck and roll in perfect, Yard-trained form, over her shoulder so her corset didn’t break her back. Just in time—something enormous buried itself into the wall behind her. . For one madcap moment she wondered who had let a freight train into her department. But that notion dissipated as a cloud of mortar and dust blossomed, glinting here and there with the touch of chrome.

  “Cid!” Hargreaves shouted, but the grizzled figure stuffed in a set of work overalls was already bumbling over to the disheveled inspector.

  “I was just patching her fanny and she up and waltzed away from me, Inspector. Blasted heap of junk,” the gruff old mechanic said, one thick hand massaging away a stitch in his side. He looked through a dense, salty beard and tinted goggles to behold a foot-long wrench in his other hand, as if he had forgotten to put it down. “These tinkers think they’ve the measure of Mordemere, and stuck all sorts of rubbish in this big fella. The madman’s forgotten more than they ever knew!”

  “Peace, Tanner, peace,” the inspector soothed. She gently nudged the aged mechanic away from the twitching piece of machinery embedded in the cinder wall. Two stories of whistling, hissing steamworks continued to scrape green paint and sparks from itself until, quite suddenly, a billowing cloud of steam vented into the lofty chamber. The titan ground itself to a halt, one steel claw coming to rest against the wall.

  “From the case on Friday?” the inspector asked. “I thought we were scrapping it for parts.”

  “We were, Maman, only Hallow saw ze big one had a tougher chassis.”

  The explanation came from behind Hargreaves, in the form of a raven-haired youth in dirty work clothes. Her grubby linen skirt ended at the knees, where slender copper sculpture took over for the girl’s shins. In places, Hargreaves could see completely through the tubing and fluted metal. Even after two years, she sometimes caught herself staring at the slender French girl, thinking about the day she pulled Cezette Louissaint from the belly of an abomination.

  Cezette had been reborn covered in ichor and maimed from the knees down. She had been small, seeming at first to be no more than nine or ten, but after two years of decent food and clean baths, the girl had blossomed into a young woman, and now looked closer to fifteen or sixteen. If asked, the girl couldn’t tell for sure. She had spent too long locked away before her transformation to know.

  Cezette did not seem to mind her predicament. If anything, she was fond of showing off her clockwork legs with elaborate ballet extensions and pirouettes, albeit only to the crew down in this garage. There was a necessity to sequester Cezette underneath Scotland Yard and off the London streets, lest she be kidnapped for her beautiful new limbs. Steamcrafts were worth a lot in money and innovation these days. Cezette had taken this isolation in stride, but sometimes Hargreaves felt she was stifling the young lady. Besides the regular tutoring Hargreaves provided, Cezette expressed a distinct interest in automata. In that spirit the inspector had arranged a place for her in M.A.D. working with the best mechanic Hargreaves had ever known. The girl had taken to the machinery like a duck to water.

  “I did try to stop the child and madman,” said a reedy male voice joining the discussion. “But I think I set them off instead.” The pasty complexion of Jean Hallow appeared like a ghost out of the cavernous dark. Born of an Englishman and some species of white bread, he seemed indigenous to the caves, part of it.

  Hargreaves had found Jean in a dusty records room. She had been investigating a larceny case at the start of her new appointment. Jean Hallow had, uncannily, produced a trio of unsolved robbery cases off the top of his head. From those files they had deduced the locked room cases had been accomplished through the strategic deployment of street urchins, not some elaborate engine or apparatus. They fit much better through the chimneys, were cheaper to acquire, and were easily replaced when they died of groin growths.

  Hargreaves had requisitioned Jean Hallow’s service at her earliest convenience. With one of the Yard’s difference engines at his disposal, the archivist was invaluable at staying on top of the endless stream of rubbish from the other offices. Invaluable, if a bit private. Hargreaves did not care to pry into the man’s affairs. He had plenty to teach Cezette and that was all that mattered.

  Hargreaves constantly found herself grinning at the motley crew. Cezette Louissaint, Cid Tanner, Jean Hallow. Here was the Yard’s newest section, the Mobile Automata Division, tasked with maintaining and deploying heavy steam support to MD6. Despite the overwhelming necessity for automata in all sections, the top brass had deemed the entire department Hargreaves’ jurisdiction, deferring to Her Majesty’s judgment.

  “What have I said about firing up the gears when I’m not around? You lot are lucky it’s one in the morning, or I’d have the Commissioner down here cracking some heads. Bloody great shock, you’d think it were Mordemere back from the dead!” shouted Hargreaves. She breathed deeply, trying to slow her heart. Her aitches were showing. Her stomach twitched, unsettled.

  “Sorry, Maman,” Cezette said sheepishly. “But there’s so little to do ’ere! Jean brings me all ze books I want, but it is très difficile to be not two blocks from la bibliothèque. If I were allowed to stroll Hyde Park I might not feel so… existential!”

  “Good word,” said Hallow, but quickly turned away when Hargreaves shot daggers out of her eyes.

  Cezette’s tutor was right to feel proud, but Hargreaves didn’t need his cheek. Besides, she felt guilty about not being able to allow the youth to wander just anywhere due to her valuable legs. Cezette had been under the thrall of the alchemic madman Mordemere. Who knew what secrets still lay beneath her skin, behind her eyes? M.A.D. seemed as good a place as any for the precocious child. At any rate the automata kept her stimulated… It was a costly diversion, Hargreaves saw now, but she didn’t have a better answer for her ward yet.

  “Just… don’t do it again,” said Hargreaves, a bit limply.

  “Mon Dieu! Je m’ennuve!” Cezette cried, and stomped off in a metallic huff.

  “And you, Jean, you should have known better,” Hargreaves finished, conveniently turning her ire on the pale figure still lurking about the gear bay.

  “I did know better,” Jean managed, “but I am afraid our little Cezet
te is still afraid of the deeper tunnels, where the automata would do no harm.”

  “C’est where you keep your logic engines.” Cezette whirled, mounting a protest. “Who knows when it will be logical to murder me in some dark corner?”

  “M.A.D. is already taking heavy flak for our huge independent budget. Sanctioned by the queen or no, I don’t want to pay for knocking down Scotland Yard,” Hargreaves continued, walking past Cid, Cezette, and Hallow. Her diversion from the office was certainly working. “I’ll be just an hour or two. Please keep this place shipshape while I’m gone.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” came a chorus of voices. The inspector sighed.

  Hargreaves’ heels clicked neatly on the utilitarian concrete, echoing down the tunnel. She left the main headquarters under Scotland Yard, passing through where Hallow had just entered. Her hearty crew had given her more reason to vent.

  When Hargreaves commissioned this MD6 headquarters, she didn’t have much choice in the location. With the airways taken up by the Royal Navy, and the various crooked streets of London unsuitable even for some horse-and-fours, there was only one way of deploying her forces into the city swiftly—the underground tunnels. Some twenty kilometers of unused, often undocumented, sunken rail passages made the perfect conduit for their operations. Moving a couple of tons of steaming steel from Victoria Embankment to Dartford took only twenty minutes. Not to mention, there were other fringe benefits.

  “Alphonse tonight, Maman?” Cezette asked as Hargreaves approached the hangars sunken into the tunnel sides. The little mechanical ballerina had not made a sound, but Hargreaves was becoming accustomed to the prosthetic legs working a little too well. She would rather the girl walk silently than not walk at all. Sneaking up behind her was just Cezette being precocious.

  “It’s the Gaelic-Seven,” Hargreaves said, “not Alphonse.”

  “Shh! He’ll hear!”

  “Hell’s bells! Yes, Cezette, I’ll have Alphonse tonight. Take your things,” Hargreaves said. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

  “Maman, I will take ze velocipede,” Cezette said. “Tolstoy needs fixing.”

  “You’ll come along in an hour, or you’ll not get any dinner,” said Hargreaves. She much preferred discipline to talks about school. She hadn’t much experience as a mother, but she remembered her own youth. Structure and order, that was the trick. That had gotten her through Maple Cross, that and the Yard’s strict programme of training.

  Now, though, the inspector tried to hide her disappointment as Cezette turned on her heel and trotted back the way she had come. The townhouse tended to get lonely with just the landlady for company.

  She rounded the corner at bay number seven. A heavy switch allowed arc floodlamps to reveal the chrome metal of Alphonse standing at attention, waiting for her patiently in a cradle of wrought iron. The cockpit was set in the chest cavity, behind a thick chest plate enameled with St. George’s cross. She could see from the hollow of the neck, under the chevron plate of Alphonse’s helm. A stechhelm, or frog’s head, squatted over the huge shoulders.

  “Right,” the inspector said. She climbed the short flight of stairs in the hangar and jumped into her familiar seat aboard the Gaelic-Seven. After she trod on the starter of the ten-foot-high automata, the pressurized furnace caught with a pop.

  Satisfied no prying eyes were about, Hargreaves gave the control surfaces a loving stroke. The machine made her feel comfortable, protected, in control. Thick hoses connected to the Yard’s boiler rooms infused the automata with piping-hot water. The pulse of the metal made it seem almost alive. With the Tesla lamps glinting off the unicorns and lions emblazoned on his pauldrons, Gaelic-Seven always seemed to resemble a large ogre dressed as a knight. Tonight, however, Alphonse was not on a mission of battle, but of escort—he was Hargreaves’ dance partner for the evening.

  “Allons-y, Alphonse!” Hargreaves sang along to the hum of the gear’s movements. She was trying out something from a recent picture-house feature, quite a silly piece—something to do with time travel. Tommyrot, of course, but she quite fancied the hero. She was halfway out the door before the realization hit her.

  “Bollocks, now that imp’s got me calling you Alphonse,” she cursed into the wind. She would have to correct herself on her way to the crime scene tomorrow.

  2

  Assault at Temple Mills

  Morning sunshine basted the machinery cathedral of Temple Mills Rail Depot. Every coal mote lit up in the beams. Vanessa Hargreaves stood slack-jawed.

  The inspector was not a fanatic of dirigibles like Rosa Marija nor an admirer of road engines like Albion Clemens, but she was a British woman, born and bred. Her love of trains had been put into her by rattling tracks, clean steam, and station teashops. Those sensations always meant a trip to Brighton Beach, or a visit into London. Decades of post-war propaganda infused Britain’s superiority in every rivet, and the romance of travel was lacquered into smoothly appointed rail cars. Initiation into the Metropolitan Police Service had further strengthened her love of locomotives. The railroads were the pride of Queen and Country, and thus, the secret pride of Vanessa Hargreaves.

  Temple Mills dwarfed anything Hargreaves had ever seen. The old water mill, she had been told, originally housed eight train-roads, but these had been long since expanded. Pipes were laid, track set, the wrought iron sculpted into trefoils, escutcheons, Neo-Victorian shapes. On either side of the entrance stood a brace of statues, one of a young, battle-ready Athena, clutching a spear and a round aegis painted with the Union Flag. The other was Hermes in flight, god of travelers. The Knights Templar who originally owned the mill would have balked at the grandeur, or taken it for granted—they were imperialists, after all.

  Inside, tracks threaded in from the expanse of yard, feeding up, down, and through the five stories of sturdy masonry. Locomotives were everywhere Vanessa cared to look, triple-deep and parked on vertical rotaries, like gun chambers loaded with comfort and fine dining. Chained to enormous pistons, the rotaries shunted each car, track and all, through three levels of the building. Their idling boilers filled the enormous space with a stifling wet heat, and a pervasive smell of soot.

  Outside, Alphonse sat gleaming, an Olympian cousin to these steel titans. Parked immediately before him, just inside the entrance, was a shining Pullman sleeper car, a true George Pullman, no doubt shipped at great cost from America. The dull red paint made for running the great desert expanses of the American southwest had begun to discolor in the English damp, peeling in great swatches as the stuff shrank and pulled away from the metal. On the same rotary, a little to the right and above the car was a second sleeper, an English Barclay in comforting green. Directly below that was a squat caboose, shorter by half and sharing the rotary slot with a diner car.

  “If you look to the front of that rotary, you’ll see the Fenchurch Flyer herself,” came a voice from behind Vanessa Hargreaves.

  She turned to behold a greasy mechanic as different from M.A.D.’s Cid Tanner as could be. Hargreaves had first met the pirate shipwright aboard Albion’s Huckleberry. Naturally, she thought all engineers were old, crotchety, or some combination thereof. Far from stopping her poaching him, those qualities had been a comfort when Tanner decided to accompany Cezette to London.

  This mechanic was shaggy, young, and tanned despite the English sunshine. Best of all, he seemed unfazed that Hargreaves was out and about without a chaperone. England was being pushed away from such restrictive customs by the young, charismatic queen, but the old vestiges remained in places.

  “Pardon me, I must have startled you,” this man now said in a perfect, nondescript accent. Hargreaves recognized it as a distinct sound, as regular as the broadwaves’ or picture house announcers’. Of course, a naturalized Moor, she decided, having not settled on his specific origin. It did not seem polite to ask upon first meeting—some traditions were worth keeping over others.

  “No pardons necessary. I was clearly admiring the Flyer, and appreciate the
introduction,” Hargreaves said.

  “I’m the foreman, Thomas El-Nevazar. We are about to line up the formation now, if you would like to watch.” The foreman, apparent because of the whistle he now blew, signaled the operation to begin. Hargreaves became transfixed.

  Before her eyes, the rotary began to spin laterally, with great ratcheting sounds that reminded her of Alphonse’s lumbering bulk. Whole sections of track rotated before her, carrying their seemingly monumental loads of cars. As each car was lined up and hitched behind the golden chrome of the Fenchurch Flyer, a block of tackle and chain as large as her waist drew the engine forward, slowly building the train as easily as a child might connect a model railroad. The mechanism allowed any car to be separated from the series for service, without the cumbersome rail switching she normally associated with these operations. The Flyer slid smoothly forward, through the cathedral formed by a trellis of steel columns.

  “Oh, bravo!” Vanessa cried. The Fenchurch Flyer sat gently puffing on the rails, like some great, golden, benevolent serpent.

  “Thank you, Miss….”

  “Inspector,” Hargreaves automatically corrected, but toned down the edge she normally used for the uniformed constables. “Vanessa Hargreaves.”

  “Here about the Montmartre Express,” El-Nevazar said, “we’ve had a flock of constables survey the bloody thing already. One more pretty one wouldn’t hurt. The baggage car’s parked in the back.”

  Separated from the train proper, the damaged baggage car was not on a rotary, but had been moved to a quiet corner of the depot. The little platform stripped of walls and roof looked naked and sad to Hargreaves’ eyes. According to the report, what baggage remained had been sent to its owners, and now only shredded fragments of sheet metal and strangely intact wheels were left of the once-handsome car.

  Hargreaves touched the jagged, saw-toothed edge of the destruction and was reminded of the Highgate bank job. The steel had been crumpled like tissue paper.